Contact:
Barbara Branagan-Mitchell at 914-232-7201
Phyllis Levine at 845.896.6934 X3001 or by Email
Astor Home Wins Advance-NY Grant
Rhinebeck and Fishkill, New York, October 5, 2007 – James McGuirk, Ph.D., CEO and Executive Director of the Astor Home for Children (www.astorservices.org) in Rhinebeck, New York, announced that the not-for-profit organization has received an ADVANCE-NY grant from the New York State Department of Labor Workforce Development and Training Division. Dr. McGuirk states, “When we received a 25M grant to initiate Lean Office Techniques training for our staff members, we contacted several agencies to request bids for contracts. We are especially pleased to announce that we finalized an agreement to work with HVTDC, The Hudson Valley Technology Development Center in Fishkill, to fulfill the needed training.” HVTDC is the not for profit business and technology resource center that works with manufacturing, technology-based and other small to mid-sized companies and organizations to help them adopt new business practices in order to grow while working more efficiently, effectively and profitably by streamlining daily operations.
In February 2007, HVTDC worked with Astor’s Dutchess County Community Based Services in Poughkeepsie to initiate Lean training to eliminate numerous cumbersome practices within the agency that evolved over time due to the growth in client numbers, and complexity and diversity of the services offered. Astor CFO, Ed Lyons, remarked in early 2007, “We want to increase efficiencies in all of our systems, and we expect that the extensive expertise and third-party observances of the HVTDC staff will help cite problem areas in efficiency and help our staff rectify any blocks to productivity.” This fall, Gus Tsoubris, Ph.D., Assistant Executive Director for Astor’s Dutchess Community Based Services states, "HVTDC’s Lean training has helped us reach our goal of streamlining our processes so that more time is now being spent focusing on the children and families we serve.”
A voluntary, nonprofit agency sponsored by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, The Astor Home for Children provides services for children and their families through locations in Dutchess, Orange and Ulster Counties, and the Bronx. The agency provides prevention, early childhood, special education, community behavioral health and residential treatment programs. Astor’s staff includes fully certified psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, educators, childcare and health care workers, plus many support personnel. The organization’s commitment to excellence is reflected in its exemplary training programs for psychology, social work and child care professionals, through conferences, on site experience and publication.
Astor Home applied for an ADVANCE-NY grant that is designed to support employer strategies and efforts for developing their workforce by providing funding for upgrading the occupational skills of their workers. ADVANCE-NY addresses employer demands for skilled workers by funding projects that solve skilled worker shortages by promoting upgrading of skills for workers.
Melinda Weisberg, Director of Public Policy and Strategic Initiatives for Astor, states that, “With funding now in place, staff members in Astor’s Community Based Mental Health Clinics will begin Lean Awareness Training to improve efficiencies so that our clients are better served. Under HVTDC’s Lean Trainers, those staff members will implement Lean Principles and Techniques to improve client care by improving their own productivity and help the agency reduce daily operational costs.”
HVTDC’s Lean Trainers will educate Astor staff members on ways to identify and eliminate wasteful, “non-value-added” steps in their daily work efforts while helping to improve productivity, minimize paper work, and reduce costs. Through application of the Lean Principle’s methodology of Value Stream Mapping (VSM), HVTDC’s team will instruct Astor’s staff in how to identify areas of non-value productivity waste that adversely impact the clinic’s operational process, and then identify specific corrective actions. David Tooker, HVTDC’s Business Development Engineer, states, “As consultants, our goal will be to help Astor’s staff create a roadmap of the current state of each clinic’s front office operations, and how they want to get into a future state of lean operations. The objective is to improve each staff member’s performance that will innately improve the overall operation of each clinic.”
HVTDC is one of ten regional technology development centers funded cooperatively through the NYS Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR), and the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST). For information on how the Hudson Valley Technology Development Center can help a business improve productivity, please contact Phyllis Levine at 845-896-6934 x 3001, via email at phyllis.levine@hvtdc.org, or visit www.hvtdc.org.